Voip apps on iPhone/iPod Touch (Fring, Truphone, Sipphone)
I just bought a pair of Apple In-ear headphone. They sound great, and I like the remote functionality. There is also a mic attached, which means I can finally input sound into my iPod Touch 2nd gen. I always dreamed of a day when I can have a small wifi device on which I can make cheap voip phone calls. Now, the dream has come true.
But, to make voip calls on an iPhone/iPod Touch, you need an app that enable voip. There are already several apps that do the job. I’ve tried three of them.
First, Fring is a Swiss army knife of an voip app. It can make calls using many SIP services or Skype. So, if you have a Skype account with some balance left, you can start to make phone calls right away. The app lists a few SIP services, but if your service is not on the list, you can provide the information yourself (ID, password, and proxy server will do). Fring does chatting, too, and it seems to be able to handle most popular chatting services (Skype, MSN, AOL, Yahoo, etc.) When I made calls to my cell phone, the sound quality was not very good (too much noise). As far as I know, Fring is the only Skype client available on iPhone/iPod Touch. So, if you love Skype, or if you want to somehow mix voip calls with chatting, Fring is your buddy. There is another app that support Skype account, IM+ for Skype, but it got one and a half star review on App Store, so I don’t know how good it is.
Truphone is basically a client for Truphone voip service. In other words, you cannot use your own SIP or Skype account on Truphone, but you have to subscribe to their service. They provide a little bit of free balance (0.20 USD to be precise), but it was not enough to make a test call to my cell phone in Korea. Instead, I made a call to their test call server, which basically echoes what you said. The sound quality was definitely better than Fring. But, since I could not make calls to normal phones, I don’t know how good its sound quality in real life. I’ve read somewhere that when you make calls using Truphone, your cell phone no. appears on the other parties screen, and not weird voip no. If that is true, that is very good, because nowadays people do not want to pick up calls from non-standard numbers. But I don’t know how that works on iPod Touch.
Finally, SipPhone on iPhone (I know, what a dull name) is a new kid on block, and a very promising one at that. It is a dedicated SIP app, which means there are more options that you can fiddle with. I made calls to my cell phone using my voipdiscount.com account, and the sound quality was excellent. When I used it for the first time, it acted up, and I had to restart my iPod Touch. But, after that, it worked fine. Considering it is version 1.1, it is no wonder it feels a bit buggy. I hope they will improve the stability in the next release. Another problem is, unlike Fring or Truphone, SipPhone on iPhone costs money ($6.99). It is not too expensive, but if you do not make many voip calls, you will wonder, do I really need this? However, if you are serious about using SIP on your iPhone/iPod Touch, this is a must have app. There is no other alternative that provide the same level of functionality on the market.
In brief, if you like to continue to use Skype balance on iPhone/iPod Touch, Fring is your option. If you want to make a lot of calls on iPhone/iPod Touch, SipPhone is better. Truphone looks nice, but I cannot vouch for it since I did not want to subscribe to their service.
